Ignore Fox-Obama's right. It's time to stop taking the network's skewed news seriously.

http://www.slate.com/id/2232563/pagenum/all/#p2

Ignore Fox
Obama's right. It's time to stop taking the network's skewed news seriously.
By Jacob Weisberg
Updated Saturday, Oct. 17, 2009, at 7:10 AM ET


Last week, when White House communications director Anita Dunn charged the Fox News Channel with right-wing bias, Fox responded the way it always does. It denied the accusation with a straight face while proceeding to confirm it with its coverage.

Take a look at Fox's own Web story on the episode. It begins by quoting a Fox News senior vice president named Michael Clemente, who says: "It's astounding the White House cannot distinguish between news and opinion programming. It seems self-serving on their part." Then it quotes David Gergen, the gravelly voice of Washington's conventional wisdom, who says the attack diminishes President Obama and works to Fox's benefit. Then we hear from Tony Blankley, Newt Gingrich's former press secretary and a frequent Fox contributor, who agrees that criticizing Fox makes no sense: "Fox has an audience of not just conservatives. They've got liberals and moderates who watch too." Then a White House correspondent for Politico echoes the claim that the controversy will boost Fox's ratings. Then comes an old quote from Fox anchor Chris Wallace, who calls Obama's team "the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington." Then the story's anonymous author cites a joke Obama made at the White House Correspondents Dinner as evidence "that Fox News has gotten under his skin." Finally, the piece cites a Pew study that suggested that while Fox was equally negative about John McCain and Obama during the last six weeks of the 2008 campaign, CNN was more negative about McCain.

Let's do a quick study of our own. Five people are quoted in this article. Two of them work for Fox. All of them assert that administration officials are either wrong in substance or politically foolish to criticize the network. No one is cited supporting Dunn's criticisms or saying that it could make sense, morally or politically, for Obama to challenge the network's power. It's a textbook example of a biased news story.

If you were watching Fox News Channel, you saw the familiar roster of platinum pundettes and anchor androids reciting the same sound bites: criticizing Fox was Obama's version of Nixon's enemies list, the rest of the news media are in Obama's corner, Obama should get back to governing, Fox opinion shows are different from its news shows, it's always dumb to go after the press. On The O'Reilly Factor on Oct. 13, the evanescent Alan Colmes, the network's weak, battered house liberal, mumbled semi-agreement while "Doctor" Monica Crowley and Bill O'Reilly lit up the scoreboard with the familiar talking points.

Any news organization that took its responsibilities seriously would take pains to cover presidential criticism fairly. It would regard doing so as itself a test of integrity and take pains not to load the dice in its own favor. At any other network, accusation of bias might even lead to some soul-searching and behavioral adjustment. At Fox, by contrast, complaints of unfairness prompt only hoots of derision and demands for "evidence" and "proof," which when presented is brushed off and ignored.

snip//

What's most distinctive about the American press is not its freedom but its tradition of independence—that it serves the public interest rather than those of parties, persuasions, or pressure groups. Media independence is a 20th-century innovation that has never fully taken root in Europe or many other countries that do have free press. The Australian-British-continental model of politicized media that Murdoch has implemented at Fox is un-American, so much so that he has little choice but go on denying what he's doing as he does it. For Murdoch, Ailes, and company, "fair and balanced" is a necessary lie. To admit that their coverage is slanted by design would violate the American understanding of the media's role in democracy and our idea of what constitutes journalistic fair play. But it's a demonstrable deceit that no longer deserves equal time.

Whether the White House engages with Fox is a tactical political question. Whether we journalists continue to do so is an ethical one. By appearing on Fox, reporters validate its propaganda values and help to undermine the role of legitimate news organizations. Respectable journalists—I'm talking to you, Mara Liasson—should stop appearing on its programs. A boycott would make Roger Ailes too happy, so let's try just ignoring Fox for a while. And no, I don't want to come on The O'Reilly Factor to discuss it.

A version of this article also appears in this week's issue of Newsweek.

is football. I never watch any of their propaganda bullshit, and I occasionally email Fox to tell them that. I don't care to listen to them, have no need to hear their garbage and don't want it in my home.

Personally, I hope they to continue to escalate their insanity so that more and more people become revolted by their paranoid nonsense, and start thinking, even a little bit, for themselves.


Thanks for this post.

mark

Well, Mr Clemente, you just admitted that Faux is "opinion programming." How about changing the name of your network to Faux Opinion?:shrug:

to them there is no objective truth, just a conservative viewpoint and a liberal viewpoint.

I had a conversation with a Fox News viewer who explained it to me. She watches Fox News because it slants the news to fit her RW ideology. She assumed that I watch my own favorite news channel because it reflected my LW ideology.

She couldn't understand that I don't trust any of the (to her) "liberal" news channels and always tried to get to the source of the news (official documents, court trancripts etc). She still insisted that I would be getting a liberal version of the documents because I would look at them via a liberal website (not always true).

She seemed unable to comprehend that a document or an event could exist outside of a political framework, that I could make up my own mind based on the facts.

I don't watch faux because of reading articles such as this. Maybe your friend would benefit from this-might open her mind a tad, or not.

will except possibly the Simpsons

But from what I remember FUX is so obviously tainted with Right-Wing slant it is difficult to take them seriously on any issue.

I wish I saved a copy of the video from the Democratic National Convention. A left leaning Progressive group was demonstrating over the war in Iraq and a FUX News reported joined in the march to attempt to gather opinions from the marchers. The whole group Immediately changed their chant to "Fuck Fox News, Fuck Fox News, Fuck Fox News" - to bad it didn't make the final edit

As someone that will go to great lengths to fact check even the things that I like it annoys me to no end when people claim that it makes them just as credible to be spoon fed their opinion by a bunch of lunatics and known liars. My dad drives me nuts that way.
Everyone that wasn't a Fox viewer has always known it was an echo chamber for racists and morons.

Maybe the White House should have it's own network similar to CSPAN?

It tells them they're right and everyone else is wrong and ignores all evidence to the contrary.

Much easier to suck on the corporate teat of "created reality" than face up to your mistakes and responsibilities.